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by Catherine Shefski

As adult pianists we all know how hard it is to carve out practice time every day. Our days slip by  full of errands, phone calls, appointments and chauffeuring kids. Sometimes whole weeks or even months fly by while we’re bombarded with family emergencies, travel, or job obligations. But we’re constantly nagged by that inner voice that tells us that consistency and time at the piano are required for steady improvement.

For the past few months I’ve been very lucky to have a lull in activity on the home front. With my daughter happily off studying abroad and two sons away at college, I chat with them often and know that they are safe, healthy and independent. For five months I was able to fill my non-teaching hours at the piano preparing for each week’s Go Play Project recording. But now things are heating up. I’m getting ready to launch a new website and learning everything I can about marketing, branding and book proposals. I’m preparing students for their annual National Guild Auditions and Spring recitals. And I’m getting excited about my daughter coming home to finish high school and start the college search and application process. My time at the piano these days is limited.

When I do find the time to sit down at the piano I aim for deliberate practice. But I also find that more often than not, simply finding the easiest way to play a difficult passage is often the best way. The shape of the phrase leads me to find the best fingering or hand movement. Awkward hand positions are  made more comfortable by simply moving the hand into the black keys. Large leaps are spot on when   I move my arm in an arc and look before I leap. Cantabile comes from the fingertips along with a freely suspended arm and close listening. Fast octaves? For me it’s all in the rebound. Playing the piano is not hard work. It’s not about getting in shape or building muscles. In fact it’s the opposite of the “no pain, no gain” rule of sports. When you’re doing it right, it feels good.

So to all those pianists who are bombarded by life’s obligations, take heart. Piano playing is not always about how regularly you practice or how long you practice or even how deliberate you practice. It just might be  about grabbing that half hour before a student arrives at the door, or those first minutes of daylight with your morning coffee, and ‘coming home’ to the piano. It’s about sinking into the keys and expressing yourself through your fingertips. It’s about deep listening and communication. And in the end it just might about the child leaving home for college or the military. Or about the recent break-up or new romance, the death in the family or the new baby’s birth.

 

Catherine Shefski is pianist, teacher and blogger who is currently recording one piano piece a week for The Go Play Project. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Here’s a helpful post from Gretchen Saathoff’s blog Gretchen’s Pianos for those of us who are feel certain parts of our anatomy need some care & attention.

Any type of pain associated with playing an instrument needs to be addressed.

Let’s talk about neck pain in this post, though, to keep things manageable for readers.

Onset

When and how did your neck pain start? What were you doing at the time?

What do you do when not playing the piano? For example, do you drive long distances? Work at a desk? Use a computer for long periods of time?

Possible causes

Your work setup, car seat, steering wheel angle, different mattress, different pillow, bicycle handlebars, even not wearing sunglasses outdoors can all be factors.

Look at your practice setup.

  • Bench too high or too low?
  • Enough light?
  • Music at a comfortable height?
  • Have you had your eyes checked recently?
  • Body alignment
  • Drafty room
  • Cold room
  • A glare on the music
  • Recent changes in technique
  • Practicing too long without a break
  • Learning a lot of notes all at the same time
  • Sight-reading for hours

A look at some other factors

  • Not getting enough sleep.
  • Not eating regular meals.
  • Being under the weather.
  • Anaemia
  • Virus
  • Having a cold
  • Coming down with something
  • Dental issues

Possible solutions

  • Ask a friend to watch you play
  • Videotape yourself playing
  • Make small changes as indicated above
  • Stretch before and after practice
  • See a doctor who treats musicians
  • Get a massage
  • See a chiropractor
  • Work with a physical therapist or sports trainer to strengthen back and shoulder muscles

Letting pain continue while proceeding as usual is not a solution, but will exacerbate the problem. Even if you are busy, have several performances coming up, or can think of a list of reasons not to address the pain, you must. Your longevity as a musician depends on it.

Related posts:

Warming up & keeping fit

Piano Pilates

Piano Yoga

 

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A pleasing trend is the increasing number of enthusiastic adult amateur pianists who are enrolling for lessons. Some are players who had lessons in their youth but who gave up, for various reasons, and who are returning to the piano after a prolonged period away from it. Others simply want to learn a new skill, or, in the case of two of my adult students, want to learn so they can help their children who are learning to play the piano.

I am what is classed as an “adult returner”: I took lessons from the age of 5 to nearly 19, with two teachers, and worked through all the exams (practical and theory). Then I went to university, fell in love, started work in London, got married, all things that conspired to keep me away from the piano. It was only when I started writing a novel in which the principal character is a pianist that I began to play again, figuring the best way to research the music I was writing about was to actually play it. It was hard, at first, to return to pieces I’d played well in my teens, but it was also cheering to find I hadn’t forgotten that much.

I started taking lessons again in my 40s, in part to try and understand the psychology of being taught as an adult, so that I could help my own adult students, all of whom are very nervous and lacking in confidence.

This is a key factor in teaching adults: building confidence. As we get older, we seem more aware of the embarrassment of making a mistake or appearing foolish in front of someone else. Just as my teacher does with me, I try to make my adult students feel comfortable and confident. Yes, it is hard to play for someone else, but they know I am not going to bite them!

Confidence comes through good and thorough preparation, self-belief, and praise from a teacher or mentor. Many adults arrive at lessons with an idea of what kind of music they want to play, and many find their own choices are too difficult. I try to select repertoire which will suit my adult students, taking into account their individual abilities and tastes.

One of the nicest aspects of teaching adults is more involved communication than one enjoys with a child. One can explain concepts and technical issues, and feel that the student has understood what is being asked of them. There is greater opportunity for more discussion about the music, and many adults have a good grounding in music history and/or theory (if they had studied music as a child), or general music appreciation, which helps enormously. The relationship often becomes personal and close; one of my adult students has become a very good friend.

Some of my other observations on teaching adult amateur pianists:

Practising: many adult students have busy lives with other commitments such as work, family and so forth which can prevent them from practising as regularly as they would like to. A teacher should be able to guide and advise an adult student on best and most effective ways to practice given time constraints. I encourage focussed practice: breaking down the music into manageable chunks and learning how to spotlight tricky or problem areas for special attention.

Repertoire: some adults, especially “returners”, can have ideas somewhat above their capabilities and will arrive with music that is, in reality, beyond them. Rather than dampen their enthusiasm, I will either find a simplified version of the piece for them to learn, or suggest learning just a small part of the piece – though it can be frustrating, as a teacher, to listen to Debussy or Chopin being mangled week after week (!). I always let adults select the repertoire they would like to learn, rather than be dictatorial about it.

Exams and benchmarking: No one, neither adult nor child, is forced to do exams in my studio. I have two adult students who want to take exams because they enjoy the challenge of studying for an exam, and find that this keeps them focussed. When my student Sarah, who has been learning with me for four years now, achieved a Merit in her Grade 1 exam, we both enjoyed a huge sense of achievement! Other adult students are more than happy to play for pleasure, with the teacher offering more advanced repertoire so that they have a sense of progression. Another of my adults regularly asks me what level the music she is learning is (roughly around Grades 2-3 at the moment).

Performance anxiety: Many adult students can be very very nervous when faced with a performance situation. I can sympathise with this, having been in a similar condition myself a few years back when I first started having lessons again. But adult students who want to take exams need to be taught how to overcome their anxiety. First, they should be encouraged to play within their capabilities; and, secondly, they should take every opportunity to practice performing – be it to the family, pets, neighbours, or in the more formal setting of a music festival. “Mock” exams are useful, along with physical exercises away from the piano to help relieve tension.

Enthusiasm: Adult amateurs are generally very enthusiastic about their piano lessons, usually because they are learning for completely different reasons to children (sense of enjoyment, fulfillment, personal development etc). Never dampen that enthusiasm, and be accommodating if the student cannot make a lesson one week (I find it helpful to have adult students on a “pay as you play” basis) or hasn’t completed their practising.

Courses and workshops: a great way for adult amateur pianists of all levels to get together, share repertoire, receive tuition from top-class teachers (often professional pianists), and simply enjoy playing the piano! More on courses here.

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One of the great pleasures of being an active member of the ‘Twitterati’ is the opportunity to connect with all sorts of interesting people around the world, who share similar interests to me. While many I will probably never meet outside the Twittersphere, I have met a few of my fellow Twitterers at concerts, for lunch and at other events (amusingly, at a recent Bachtrack party, a fellow reviewer and I identified each other by our Twitter call-signs, rather than our real names!). One of these is the left-handed pianist Nicholas McCarthy, and last night I attended Nicholas’s graduation recital in the lovely Amaryllis Fleming hall at the Royal College of Music.

Nicholas McCarthy

Nicholas was born without his right hand; that he plays the piano beautifully with just his left hand is remarkable in itself. What is more remarkable is that he only started playing the piano seriously when he was 14. He has studied with Lucy Parham at the Guildhall School of Music & Dance, and, since 2008, with Nigel Clayton at the RCM. This summer he will perform with the Paraorchestra (an initiative of conductor Charles Hazlewood) in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paraolympics.

There has been something of a theme of left-handed piano repertoire and performance on my blog recently: ‘Meet the Artist’ interviews with Nicholas and another left-handed pianist Keith Snell (who was forced to switch to left-handed repertoire when he developed focal dystonia in his right hand), and a guest post on the history of left-hand piano, also by Keith Snell. There are some very well-known works for the left-hand, perhaps most notably, piano music by Godowsky and Scriabin. For his graduation recital, Nicholas selected a programme which contained no music by these “greats” of the left-hand repertoire. Instead, he opened with the graceful Meditation from Prelude No. 1, Gounod’s transcription which intertwines Bach’s sublime Prelude in C from the WTC with Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria’. The rest of the programme was a mixture of well-known works (‘Casta Diva’ from Norma, arranged by Fumagalli, Morgen! by Strauss, transcribed for left-hand by Jonathan Mann, and Du Bist die Ruh, Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s song, transcribed by left-handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein) and less familiar repertoire, including a moody rendition of Britten’s The Miller of Dee (transcribed especially for Nicholas) and a work written for Nicholas by Anglo-French composer Tim Benjamin called Et Nous Les Os. With its unsettling clusters of sound high up in the treble and its plangent, sonorous chords in the bass, it was redolent of Liszt and Messiaen in both its scope and soundworld.

Nicholas is an elegant and understated performer. The movements and gestures he makes are so precise, so measured, so fluid that very soon one forgets he is playing with just his left hand. And his playing is not confined to the lower registers of the piano: far from it. At times, he moved nimbly between the furthest reaches of the keyboard as the score dictated, and the final piece of the programme, Der Erlkonig, provided a particularly physical work out. (As I said to him afterwards, “it’s difficult enough with both hands!”) His dynamic control was impressive, his tone and voicing poetic and subtly nuanced: achingly tender in the Meditation, growling and agitated in Erlkonig.

The whole programme was delightful, well planned with pleasing shifts in energy and mood, and beautifully presented. For me, the Tim Benajmin piece was the highlight, but I enjoyed every minute of it, and it was lovely to have the opportunity to meet Nicholas’s (very proud!) mum afterwards, and to congratulate Nick on a wonderful performance.

Nicholas’s Meet the Artist interview

Website: www.nicholasmccarthy.co.uk

Tim Benjamin composer

The Paraorchestra

Guest Post: A history of left-hand piano